


The Nature of Correspondence

by whitmans_kiss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Language, POV Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitmans_kiss/pseuds/whitmans_kiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco doesn't write Blaise over the summer, because you don't write people who aren't your friends.</p>
<p> <i>The first man you kill is tall enough and dark enough and young enough and beautiful enough that you wonder in waking nightmares whether you didn’t kill Blaise instead. -- <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel">toujours_nigel</a></i></p>
<p>(Written July 1, 2012.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature of Correspondence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toujours_nigel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/gifts).



> For [toujours_nigel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel), who wrote the original, inspirational sentence, and also because she is wonderful and can never have enough fic written for her. Thank you for letting me borrow Draco for a spell.
> 
> Draco POV.
> 
>  
> 
> _**DEATH:** The first man you kill is tall enough and dark enough and young enough and beautiful enough that you wonder in waking nightmares whether you didn’t kill Blaise instead. -- [toujours_nigel](http://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel)_

You don’t write him, over the summer holiday, because you don’t write people who aren’t your friends. And you _certainly_ don’t write people who aren’t your friends and have stripped you naked, whispered branding words of possession against your cheek, brought you off with their mouth, and then smiled when it was over.

Yes, you don’t write him because of that. You also don’t write him because you’re afraid you have nothing to say, and more afraid that he won’t, either.

The times you do convince yourself to pick up a quill, uncork navy ink the color of his favourite shirt, pull towards you a sheet of parchment that seems reasonably uncreased, you hesitate before writing his name. Because it’s not so simple as that, because you don’t know how to address the damn thing – do you begin with ‘Blaise,’ or ‘Dear Blaise,’ as though you can afford to tell him that he’s _dear,_ or do you dispense with the salutation altogether and just get on with the missive? Eventually, after a week of staring at the same blank sheet in intervals, you decide to leave a space and fill it in later, at the end, once you’ve finished writing.

This then, of course, brings you to the problem of the message itself, of figuring out how to carefully word what you want to say, and selecting a filter with which to cast what you _don’t_ in an appropriate light. Because if there’s one thing you’ve learned from innumerable packets from your mother and countless notes from your father, it’s what isn’t written is sometimes communicated more clearly than what is, and with Blaise, that’s a very risky, too dangerous game to play. You’re afraid that the spaces between the consonants of your hand will warp themselves upon reading into some secret, breakable code that will cost you whatever this thing you have with him – is. Whatever it is, if the way he kissed your brow and tucked your head against his chest, staying in your bed until an unreasonable hour of the morning ever meant anything beyond the laziness of a post-orgasmic high and the convenience of a warm body to sleep beside, nevermind to whom it actually belonged.

After a quarter of an hour of false starts and broken nibs pressed too hard against the desk, you swear loudly and decide that if it _was_ worth anything, he’d write you, first.

 

*

 

The Dark Mark you watch your father cast over the large house in Essex stays as smoke in your eyes long after you’ve Side-Alonged out. There’d been a – complication, during the raid, and the neighboring house, a Wizarding residence, had needed to be taken care of along with the intended, target residence, that of a prominent Muggle Cabinet member.

You’d been sent to silence the neighbors along with four others; casualties of war, as it were, and previous surveillance had indicated only three inhabitants – two adults, male and female, one adolescent, male. No names, no identities, just numbers, genders, and as far as Rosier was concerned, torturing them until they became that themselves was just a bonus.

When you break open the door to a dungeon workroom and a figure flings a spell at you through the half-darkness, you cast the first Curse that comes instinctively to mind, inflating the lungs of the victim until they crack ribs and the splintering bones puncture them, bursting twin pockets of air before finally piercing the heart.

As the figure crumples, you see only the dark skin of the man’s – it is a man – cheek, the line of an arrogant jaw unrecognizable at the angle he falls, but the shape of his hands as they clutch at nothing in the air and sound of the scream that never fully materializes in his throat are both at once frighteningly familiar and foreign.

You immediately turn to clutch at the sides of a caldron on a table next to you, shoving your mask up enough to vomit until you see white, the smell of bile still burning your nostrils as you bolt from the room.

 

*

 

Six hours later, the Daily Prophet still hasn’t been delivered, and you still haven’t the courage to ask your mother which house it was, exactly, that you’d raided.

It’s too early to stick your head in the fire and make a frantic call, so you decide to fuck the importance and nature of correspondence and write him.

_Blaise,_

you write, your fingers curling around the quill in a miniature imitation of how your shoulders curl into yourself,

_Are you well?_

No, no, that’s wrong; the wrong tense. You quickly pull forward a fresh sheet and begin again. You omit the date. You try not to think about why it might not matter.

_Dear Blaise,_

because he _is_ dear, and if he is dead, he won’t read it anyway to laugh at you –

_How have you been?_

Sounds desperate, possibly. You don’t care; you are. You continue.

_How is your mother enjoying the joys of matrimony for the – ninth time, now? I expect the wedding was a success, as the subsequent funeral will undoubtedly be._

Stupid, Malfoy; you are stupid. Blaise doesn’t give two shits about his mother’s latest husband, but your quill catches on ‘funeral’ and you accidentally leave a blot on the downstroke of the ‘e.’

_What horrible dress robes will she force you in this time, I wonder? Or is her latest gentleman a well-bred Muggle, fat in both wallet and waist and suitable only for his checks ~~though hardly his cock~~_

strike that, strike it. You don’t think you have it in you to recopy the letter again without that particular comment, so it stays, if faintly illegible; good enough. You had meant to ask if the husband was a Muggle to see if Blaise would be wearing the Muggle suit he’d worn for the last one and detested, but a vision of him laid carefully out in it and being lowered the full six feet of his height into the ground had forced you to reconsider, and drove you to writing about his ninth stepfather’s _penis_ for godssake.

You don’t ask for him to write back; you don’t beg for him to Floocall you rightnow, thisinstant; you end it there and sign your name without a closing, seal it up as its own envelope as quickly as you can, scribble something on the outside and attach it to the leg of your sharp-looking owl before shoving her out the window. A snappish bite to your thumb is the only thing that stops you from actually throwing her from the room.

 

*

 

The Prophet does come, eventually, over breakfast, shrieking some printed news about the raid you’d been on. You excuse yourself before your father has a chance to comment on the identity of the man you killed, not having to feign entirely the upset stomach you’ve been nursing since roughly ten-thirty the previous evening.

Making your way up to your room, you trail your fingers absently along the walls of the corridor, the rough stones giving way to softer tapestries, and when you open your door to see your owl perched haughtily on your windowsill, you’re suddenly glad for the support.

You snatch the letter hastily from the bird’s leg before holding it carefully, as though it were made of the tissue paper lining your mother’s jewelry boxes instead of the thickly folded parchment that it is. Turning it over, you see your own hand on the front, Blaise’s name, recognize your own letter returned to you; the world tilts suddenly two degrees to the left as the paper weighs heavy in your hand like the stone settling in the pit of your stomach.

You don’t do anything near so humiliating as actually _faint,_ but do you go temporarily blind, deaf, and dumb, blurry black splotches obscuring most of your vision as your chest heaves in a futile attempt to pump oxygen past the blockage of your swollen, immovable tongue.

A full five minutes pass before you realize that the seal on the letter has been broken, and with a roaring _pop,_ sound returns to your ears in time to hear the shuffle of unfolding paper, fingers moving automatically to see how it had been tampered with, and oh _gods_ then you see it, he’s written back, he’s written you back at the bottom, a note, just a line or two, in _his handwriting_ and he’s not – you didn’t – written you _back_

You don’t care what it says – you don’t read it; you crumple backward instead into your writing desk chair and bury your face in the crook of your elbow, ruining your shirt but secure in the knowledge that your mother won’t ask why you’ve cried.

For the rest of the summer holiday, you write him every day.

_Dear Blaise,_

you begin. You omit the date.


End file.
